Hero or Traitor
—– Discourse in Edward Snowden’s event
Discourse refers to “a mode of organization of knowledge in relation to material institutions, and is thus not primarily a linguistic concept. Rather, it has to do with practices and configuration of power, often rooted in organizations, which both control and are structured by distinct disciplinary knowledge”. (Bennett, 2005). In other words, discourse is not focus on language, but it as to be a system of representation, which is about the production of knowledge through language. In addition, discourse means that specific views expressed by a writer about a topic. “ The concept of discourse is not about whether things exist but about where meaning comes from.” (Hall, 1997) Discourse analysis is concerning about how to learn and analyze the user of language. Edward Joseph “ED” Snowden (born June 21,1983) is an American privacy activist, computer professional, former CIA employee, and former government contractor who leaked classified information from the U.S.National Security Agency (NSA) in 2013. The information reveled numerous global surveillance programs, many run by the NSA and the Five Eyes with the cooperation of telecommunication companies and European governments. He flew to Hong Kong after leaving his job at an NSA facility in Hawaii on May 20, 2013. He revealed thousands of classified NSA documents to journalists Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Ewen Macaskill. Snowden got many international attentions after stories exposed on some famous newspaper, including The Guardian, The Washington Post and Der Spiegel. The text one author is John Cassidy (born 1963), who is a British-American journalist. He is a staff writer at The New Yorker and a contributor to The New York review of Books, having previously been an editor at The Sunday Times of London and a deputy editor at the New York Post. The discourse of text one is Cassidy believes Edward Snowden is a hero in a sense.
Cassidy is a journalist, trying to persuade people believe Edward Snowden is an admirable hero, he announced that the United States carried out some bad behaviors to the world. The text two by Phillip Lohaus, who has worked on national security issues in both the public and private sectors. While Phillip work for government, he focused on Middle East non-proliferation and economic security issues and served both strategic and tactical assignments in support of the US military abroad. The discourse of this text is Phillip believes Edward Snowden is a grandiose narcissist who deserves to be in prison. Phillip is a research fellow, trying to persuade Edward Snowden, he is a traitor, a defector and betrayed the country and has violated the professional ethic. The inherent power position manifested by both texts will be examined in the essay. It will be proved that Edward Snowden is a power holder, however, there are two different views about Edward Snowden’s activities. Either he is seen as a hero or “no hero”. The linguistic devices of foregrounding by position of information, and the selection of positive and negative words will be discussed to support this thesis.
“The concept of power is traditionally omitted from research on justice behavior, and the role of power is firmly established in the literature on negotiations”. (Van, Koppen. P, 1988). “There are three different participants in ‘power play’, power holder, which have power and influence on some activities. Powerless, which is perceived or represented as having no power. The last one is power shifter, which is trying to convert power from one group to another group”(Laugesen, 2015). “Foucault argues in Power/Knowledge that challenge to accepted truths comes through ‘the insurrection of subjugated knowledge’’’. (Mamta, 1995) According to Foucault (1980), power is not simply “ a contest between dominator on one side and dominated on the other, and power means relations, which “is a multiform production of relation of domination”. Cassidy argued that Edward is a power holder, and powerless are US government and some other departments. Such as CIA, N.S.A. “ He (Edward Snowden) may have overlooked the existence of its extradition pact with the United States, which the U, S, authorities will most certainly seek to invoke” Snowden unveiled his possession of a large amount of information, to the United States government off-guard. He ignored law and the ethic of being a classified contractor. According to Cassidy, power holder Snowden controlled the whole activity. In addition, Edward said: “I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under.” Snowden confirmed the serious surveillance of the United States, and he still is the power holder. American government admitted the bad behavior, and they try to take some measures, but in vain. The only thing they can do is to accept the reality, to accept Snowden continue exposing the classified information to the public. They did not have any power to make the tables turn. According to Lohaus, “ we should examine the manner by which he has gone about leaking information from Hawaii NSA facility where he worked, and left the country with four laptops, suggesting that he still has many secrets left to tell”. Edward Snowden still is a power holder, he did not leak all of information to the public, and he has some other purposes as well. Even the United States Government did some researches and protects the system of classified information. However, the United States government cannot imagine that Snowden can bring what kind of troubles for them. Snowden ‘s leaks have contributed to huge, grave damage to the CIA’s intelligence capabilities.”
The United States Government is reversing power position when Snowden fled to Hong Kong, “ The selection of Hong Kong is also dubious. Legal experts believe that Hong Kong will likely extradite Snowden if he is caught. In a 2006 post in an online forum, he confessed that he’d like to live in China in the future, according to ABC news,” Lohaus argued that Snowden exposed his plan go ahead, and Hong Kong is not a good place to stay for a long time. So Snowden decided to flee to another place, Lohaus convert the power position between the US Government and Edward Snowden.
One of the linguistic devices is the use of positivity and negativity in the language. Text one has a high proportion of positive words and phrase with positive overtones. However, text two uses too many negative words. In text one, positive words and phrases: “hero”, “almost certainly right”, and “naïve young man”, “tipped in Snowden’s favor”. These positive languages give the reader the impression that Snowden is innocent, and he is a well-deserved hero. Cassidy believes that Snowden is a brave young man, and he should be respect because of his behavior. However, Phillips, in text two, the author used massive percentage of negative language: “ whistleblower”, “ concerned citizen”, and “traitor”, “violated the oath”,
“defector”, “betrayed his own conviction”. The use of negative terms contributed to reader thought Snowden is a really traitor and he afraid of gong to prison. He leaked the information and broke the role. Lohaus use positive words to undermine the power of the US Government, and shift the US Government to be powerless. Cassidy use some negative terms to change the power position of Edward Snowden, and these negative words caused Edward Snowden to be a powerless. “ Language in itself is not neutral because ideologies and values are both shaped by and reflected in language”. (Renstrom, 2011)
Another linguistic device is foregrounding by positioning of information, or conversely backgrounding, the use of the word ‘slut’. The use of the word ‘hero’ is backgrounded by the writer of text one. The word ‘hero’ has strong positive overtone. Lohaus use almost 65% words to describe Edward Snowden’s positive impact on the society. “He is a hero”. (Cassidy, 2013) The author of text one shows his position directly, and the author indicated which kind of hero would Snowden be. He confirmed that U.S. government, without obtaining any court warrants, routinely collected the phone logs of the ten of millions, perhaps hundreds of million, of Americans, who have no connect to terrorism whatsoever. (Cassidy, 2013) She has foregrounded Snowden tell the truth to the public, and exposed American bad behavior. Cassidy figured out the main targets for the N.S.A.’s data collection were Iran, Pakistan. That is normal. But countries such as Jordan, India and Egypt, American allies all, may be a bit surprised to find themselves. The overtone is there is no real partner for American, it only worry about their own benefits and to achieve the biggest aim – to control the world. The biggest traitor is American government, Snowden is not, and he exposed the American surveillance and made American government lost their reputation in the stage of the world. Lohaus states his view, he still believe Edward Snowden is a really hero, and he did not need to escape. Furthermore, the US government need think about their actions in depth, and American government need take actions to shape a new image among the public. Emotional words found in a broad range of contexts are more frequently used in language, and typically. ( Matlin & Stang, 1978) “Emotional words found in a narrow range of contexts are more obscure in language, and are typically negative in connotation”. (Alson, J & Burgess, C) In text two, the tittle is “Edward Snowden is ‘no hero’”. Lohaus has foregrounded Snowden is a traitor, which is betrayed to the country and the ethic of his job. In addition, the author still doubt why Snowden releasing information about the United States government. Lohaus still believe Edward Snowden has other purposes whether good or bad. Even he exposed the American Government’s surveillance, he was not to be regard as a traitor, and he is only a criminal. Even he tell the truth, he did not tell anything about the whole activity, other specialists think that Snowden still has other plans, and that is the reason why he fled to Hong Kong. The author thinks that in some ways, Snowden is a hero, or not a hero. So author use “no hero” in tittle to convey his position. There is a word has shown three times in the content-“whistleblower”, which is a neutral word. Whistleblower can be described brave, strong and justicial. On the other hand, whistleblower is ingrate, insidious and immoral. Nobody knows what was Snowden thinking; everyone judges his behavior in different perspective. Lohaus thought Snowden should not be rewarded, and should not be punished. Just a rouge, which violated the professional ethics.
In conclusion, the two texts manifest two different discourses about the common topic. Linguistic devices that reflect the discourse and underlying ‘power play’ as seen by each writer, by their headlines and phrase. The selection of positive words and negative words and by the foregrounding and backgrounding of the word hero will be a source of debated issues of professional ethics.
References list:
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